Richard II

I'm going through something of a Shakespeare phase. It all started about three weeks ago, when I finally got round to reading Henry V. Although I'm not much of a nationalist, I loved it. From there I downloaded the 2012 BBC miniseries The Hollow Crown and began making my slow way through the Henriad. Over Friday and Saturday I reacquainted myself with Hamlet. And, finally, over the last couple of days I read Richard II. 

Richard II covers the last couple of years from the real-life Richard's reign, from his exiling of Henry Bolingbroke to his eventual murder at Pontefract Castle. Shakespeare being Shakespeare, there is a certain amount of artistic license on display with liberal application of fiction to the historical fact. For one thing, Richard may not have been bloodily murdered a la Thomas a Becket, with it being far more likely that he was simply neglected and starved to death in early 1400. But the banishment and return of Bolingbroke - better known to the casual historian as Henry IV - and the circumstances surrounding the deposition are accurate enough to satisfy the more pernickety reader of the play.

I had the benefit of having seen the TV adaptation starring Ben Whishaw, Patrick Stewart and various others prior to reading the original source material, and I'm coming round to the fact that this is how Shakespeare should be read. Sometimes it can be difficult to see the passion and the fire in a play without performance. Words, words, words, as a certain Danish prince would put it, are just those. Once performances are fixed in the mind of the reader, the depth of the text can be seen more easily.

That isn't to say it isn't possible to appreciate the beauty of a play without having seen it performed, however. I've never seen Henry V in a performance theatrical or otherwise, but the strength and power of Shakespeare's poetry in the words of Harry's St Crispin's Day speech before the Battle of Agincourt shine through. It's impossible for me to not read Shakespeare aloud, and even though I have seen Richard II I still read memorable passages aloud, putting my own slant on them. Through action comes interpretation, and without action meaning can be lost to the casual modern reader.

I found Richard himself to be a fascinating character. Ben Whishaw's performance disagreed with my own interpretation; I found him to very much be a narcissist, while Whishaw gave him a more sympathetic edge, even while he seemed at times to be tinged with madness. He's ruthless and badly advised. He's given to despair even whilst defiant. He's also prone to the most flowery speeches of the play, which includes the best speech in the entire play:

No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let's choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchise, be fear'd and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence: throw away respect,
Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king?

Is he miserable or angry? Or both? His despair is palpable, but he sees the bitter irony in his situation. The beauty of the passage is undeniable. Better scholars than I will, no doubt, still be dissecting it more than 400 years after it was written to work out all the imagery and see where double meanings change interpretations.

I thoroughly enjoyed Richard II, and I'll be continuing to read Shakespeare's histories over the course of the summer. The subtlety and power of even Shakespeare's lesser works always makes them worth the time to digest. It's been a treat to spend so much time with him recently.

Broken Monsters

Getting into a serial killer's mind was something Lauren Beukes did brilliantly in The Shining Girls. It helped that it had an interesting premise beyond the normal serial killer plot, with the time travel twist. I read a lot - certainly more than the vast majority of people - and when I describe The Shining Girls as the best book I've read in a very long time, it's a compliment that should carry some weight.

Broken Monsters is Beukes's new book (released in paperback last month). Like The Shining Girls, it's a serial killer thriller. Unlike its predecessor, however, there isn't a supernatural twist. The monsters are purely within the real world. But the horror elements are dialled to the maximum. This is no cosy crime caper. It's a book that will get under your skin and leave you seeing things in the night.

The first murder in Broken Monsters is graphic and chilling. A boy is found with his bottom half removed and with his legs replaced by the back half of a deer. The ensuing investigation goes deep into the weird art underworld of Detroit.

There's more going on than just murders. As is Beukes's trademark, there's a tech-savvy undercurrent, a la Moxyland. This time, the horrors of the underworld of social media are exposed by detective protagonist Gabi Verdaso's teenage daughter, Layla. And there's 'journalist' Jonno, who follows the case from its outset.

A lot goes on. It's a complex book that always manages to stay the right side of convoluted. Plotlines stay a long way apart at first, but gradually bind themselves up into one. It's difficult not to admire the skilful plotting that has gone into the book. I seem to remember from the extra bits in The Shining Girls that Beukes plots her books like a detective charts a case, making links and following leads. Her planning shows, as does her growing confidence and assurance as a writer. It needs to be remembered that Broken Monsters is only her fourth novel.

I enjoyed the book immensely, from the nicely-paced opening to the pulse-pounding conclusion, but that isn't to say I didn't have complaints. The main one of which is that it's too long.

There are three distinct climaxes in the book. The killer is known to the police by just past the halfway mark, at the party that marks the first of those climaxes. The second - abortive - climax happens a little later. The final climax is the conclusion.

Although the conclusion is exhilarating, I can't help but wonder whether the back half of the book needed to do everything that it did. There was particular one strand of the narrative that felt like it was unnecessary. Although everything needed to be brought to a conclusion, it felt drawn out, slowing the pace, albeit without killing it.

But the question should be asked: did I enjoy the book despite this weakness? Absolutely, and immensely. The next time I see that Lauren Beukes has a new book out, I'll be in the queue waiting for it. It's refreshing to see a writer trying alternative takes on the old tropes. If you're looking for a thriller with horror elements which both scares and compels, I can recommend Broken Monsters.

Fool's Assassin (Robin Hobb)

I can easily explain my love for Robin Hobb's work.

Her books are slow, that much is true. Hundreds of pages can pass without anything significant happening. The 2,000-page Assassin books contain perhaps fewer than four or five hundred pages with significant action. If you're looking for fast-paced action with your fantasy, look at Scott Lynch.

Yet that slowness is with reason. What Hobb does better than any other writer in modern fantasy is build. She builds characters. She builds worlds. She builds connections, between character and world, writer and character. Within a hundred pages she might not have taken her characters very far in their world, but she's created a bond between you and them which is hard to shake off.

Fool's Assassin is the seventeenth book I've read by Hobb, and the fourteenth I've read in her Realm of the Elderlings world. It's not without background that I came to the first book in The Fitz and the Fool. I'm used to Fitz - this is the seventh time he's been the point-of-view protagonist, following on from the Assassin and Fool books. I like Fitz. I'd even go so far as to say he's one of my favourite characters of all time.

Fitz, after his traumatic childhood and early adulthood as a royal bastard at Buckkeep, the seat and court of the ruling Farseer dynasty, is finally living a life of peace with his sweetheart Molly and his children and step-children. But that life is interrupted by mysterious messengers and then, in the later years of Fitz and Molly's lives, the arrival of a new daughter.

When I say Hobb's writing is slow, this is as slow a book as I can remember her writing. For more than 500 pages hardly any action takes place. But the writing is beautiful and evocative. Even when it feels like nothing is happening, the connections are being established between you and the characters. Every feeling is felt like an emotion of your own. The familiar phrase, 'Oh, Fitz,' was uttered more than once while I was reading Fool's Assassin.

Is Fool's Assassin as good as the Assassin novels? No. But then I rate the Assassin books as the best I've ever read in the fantasy field. Young Fitz is a more interesting character than older Fitz, and it reads less like a biography. But, having said that, saying I prefer the Assassin books to The Fitz and the Fool thus far is like comparing Lionel Messi to Sergio Aguero. Yes, Messi is better, but Aguero is still a world-class footballer.

Boneshaker

It will be a while until I next pick up a novel. With uni assignments biting hard, my main reading focus is currently on titles such as The Battle for Scotland by Andrew Marr and Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 by Linda Colley. It will be March the next time I have a novel in my hands.

The last novel I read before my temporary exile from the form, Boneshaker by Cherie Priest, probably wasn't the best book to go on hiatus with. It's a highly-rated steampunk novel that kicks off the Clockwork Century series.

The American Civil War is ongoing in the 1880s; the point of divergence comes when 'Stonewall' Jackson didn't die as he did in real life. Fifteen years before the start of the novel, downtown Seattle was destroyed by the eponymous device, created by Leviticus Blue, the inevitable mad scientist. The device unleashed the Blight, which created a breed of the walking dead. Within months, a wall had been constructed around the affected area, containing the Blight.

There's a lot of backstory to take in, and it's all relevant in one way or another. One of our protagonists, Briar Wilkes, is the widow of Leviticus Blue, ostracised by society because of her husband's actions, as well as by her father's - he was the man who freed prisoners from the cells to let them escape the Blight. Our other protagonist, her son Ezekiel, sets off on a quest behind the wall in an attempt to clear his father's name.

The backstory is handled pretty well, considering the amount of it there is, but some of it is a little too contrived. The final twist could have been handled better. One thing about having two point of view characters is that we knew their thoughts - having the final reveal executed through one of them felt contrived, especially when the character had been thinking about it on a number of occasions without revealing specifics. It's from things like this that the feeling of distance between the reader and the characters arises, and I'd say it's this distance which is the biggest problem of Boneshaker.

There's a lot to like about Boneshaker. There's no pretensions of grandeur about it: it's a rollicking adventure with airships and kooky steampunk devices and crimelords and zombies, and it's unashamed about all of that. It wants you along for the ride. The writing has a good pace to it (though it lacks in subtlety and power when compared to such as Perdido Street Station). But there's a nagging distance between reader and characters that stops you from getting properly involved. You can't quite forget that you are reading a book, that it is just words on a page.

I've seen other reviews criticising Boneshaker for doing nothing with the idea of a divergence from the reality of the American Civil War. It's not a criticism I would share. Boneshaker read very much like an introduction to a new world where other stories happened to be taking place at the same time. That a war is going on contemporaneously doesn't mean it has to force itself on the narrative; sometimes world building for the sake of a rich world doesn't have to be a focus of the narrative. Besides, I have a feeling that those elements will be used later in the Clockwork Century series.

In all, Boneshaker was a fun diversion. Nothing too challenging, or too world-changing, but a fun read, despite its problems. I'll probably be back to read the second in the series at some point. But first, I'd better get this essay planned...

The Best of 2014

Where 2013 was a year of having the time to do as I wished, 2014 has been one where time has been at a premium. My reading for pleasure has been more limited than it has been for some time as I've studied for a masters in history. Writing time has been severely limited. I've not even managed to complete a single DVD boxset while I've been relaxing, and the only two games I've completed this year have clocked in at less than 100 hours.

That's not to say I've not read some fine work this year. In terms of non-fiction, it's been the best year I've probably ever had; indeed, my non-fiction reading has exceeded the amount of SF I've managed to read. On the other hand, I've not read as much short fiction as I would like. Interzone and Black Static have been all I've managed on a consistent basis, and I'm an issue behind in each of those as it is.

My reading this year has been more eclectic than in previous years. The Iliad, Superman: Red Son, How to Change the World: Tales of Marx and Marxism, The Explorer, Calcio... The list goes on. As usual I've consciously tried to read an equal split between men and women writers, a task I've hopelessly failed at this year (just 23 out of 102 books were written by or contributed to by women). Thanks to now possessing a Kindle Fire, I've been able to read a number of graphic novels which I've been waiting to read for some time.

From what I've read, seen, and played, my year's best is as follows:

Best film

Interstellar reminded me of 2001: A Space Odyssey in some ways, although in others it was a very different film. Perhaps the start was slow, and some of the science failed a little, but as a spectacle it was superb. One scene in particular was outstanding.

Best football book

Jonathan Wilson's Inverting the Pyramid was an outstanding history of football tactics. His more recent work The Outsider was a remarkable work on the history and development of the position and role of the goalkeeper. Anecdotal in places, and showing Wilson's tactical awareness, The Outsider is one of the most readable books I've read about football.

An honourable mention goes to Simon Kuper's Football Against the Enemy, which is one of the outstanding football books of the last 30 years.

Best history book

Both Iron Curtain by Anne Applebaum and The Penguin History of Modern Russia by Robert Service were outstanding, but the best work of history I've read this year is Anna Funder's Stasiland. Political history can be terrifying, but it's this kind of oral social history which brings the realities of a totalitarian state home.

Best graphic novel

I have to admit that after a good start, Y: The Last Man tailed off. Superman: Red Son was a tremendous stand-alone work. But the best I've read this year was the conclusion to Joe Hill's Locke and Key series, which brought the tale of the Locke children and their struggle to a conclusion. It was tremendous read throughout, and the conclusion was appropriately powerful, horrific, and compelling.

Best novel

There are only really two contenders, despite having read some good books this year. Perhaps the pick of the new fantasy novels I've read was Scott Lynch's The Republic of Thieves. And I didn't read any horror novels whatsoever. But the two main contenders for best book I've read this year are Emphyrio by Jack Vance, and The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by John Le Carré. And I can't pick between them. Both were outstanding in different ways.

Best TV series

Another tough category to finish. I've not watched much telly this year, either on the telly or via boxsets. The most I've watched live has been the World Cup, having given up on Doctor Who a couple of years back. I've caught snippets of Borgen, and occasionally watched the odd episode of The West Wing, but otherwise the sum of my telly watching this year has been:

• Star Trek: The Original Series (48 episodes)
• Star Trek: The Animated Series (2 episodes)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1 episode)
• Game of Thrones (10 episodes)
• Dollhouse (18 episodes)

And the clear winner is Game of Thrones.

Top Ten Book List

After being nominated to compile my top ten books on Facebook, I had to think. One problem of always having at least one book on the go and getting through a book every few days is that I have read a lot, and a lot of those books are books I've fallen in love with for one reason or another. Ask me my favourite book and I can give you a shortlist of three or four; ask me for my top ten and expect to be besieged by a list of somewhere between thirty and forty.

This list isn't perfect. I reckon I'll be back to edit it at various points, and I feel I should probably include some honourable mentions at some point. Enough books have entertained me and changed me and made me think that I should at least mention a handful of them beyond the 'top ten'. But, for now, this is my top ten (subject to my ever-changing opinion).

10. Perdido Street Station (China Miéville)

There are a few books by the master of the New Weird which I could have mentioned. The City and the City was a Philip K. Dick-esque journey through the seen and the unseen in the course of a murder investigation, and Embassytown is probably the best SF novel of the last 5 years, to name but two. But I've plumped for Perdido Street Station, the 900-page steampunk brick, which introduces the grotesque world of Bas-Lag in all its raucous glory. It's fantasy, but it's not typical fantasy, and it marks itself as separate from the mainstream JRR Tolkien knock-offs from the word go. That it's supremely entertaining and engaging also helps matters.

9. All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque)

When I read this I stayed up until 2am to finish it - a mark of quality if ever there was one. It's a touching war story that makes you re-evaluate war and its consequences from a human perspective. That I haven't re-read it yet it something of a travesty. As a human being you owe it to yourself to read certain types of book, and this falls into that category.

8. Hamlet (William Shakespeare)

Oh, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew...

Hamlet's first soliloquy is actually better than his most-celebrated lines, in my view, at least. Some people don't like Shakespeare because it was forced on them at school. There are some Shakespeare plays which aren't the most fun and don't make sense (see: The Tempest), but when Shakespeare is at his best his plays are brilliant storytelling, with humanity encapsulated beautifully. This is apparent throughout my favourite play - which I've never had the chance to see performed live.

7. The Day of the Triffids (John Wyndham)

Man-eating plants that can walk, possible Soviet conspiracies, and humanity being rendered blind overnight in massive numbers by an improbable meteor shower leaving it vulnerable to the aforementioned plants combine in an orgy of pure silliness. All it really needs to improve it is someone saying that dogs can't look up (Big Al said so). Just don't try to take it seriously.

6. Hyperion/The Fall of Hyperion (Dan Simmons)

OK, so I'm cheating a bit by getting both of these in at once, but when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. You can't have one without the other, and both are absolutely magnificent, despite differences in structure. Space opera sometimes struggles to balance characters with events, but on this occasion Simmons creates a touching story set amidst great events which don't lose their impact. And there are added literary references to enjoy.

5. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell)

Prophetic, essential, misguided, overrated, magnificent... I can't add anything to what has already been said a million times over about Orwell's magnum opus, certainly not in one paragraph. Its dissemination of totalitarianism is essential for understanding the psychology of the world in its post-WWII state.

4. A Game of Thrones (George RR Martin)

I agonised over this one. I wondered whether to pick one of Robin Hobb's Assassin books, or whether to select The Lies of Locke Lamora. When done well, traditional fantasy can be wonderfully entertaining and still be challenging, as those two books show. But A Game of Thrones won out, if only for one reason: Tyrion Lannister. Tyrion probably comes into his own more in the later volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire, but the first volume in the series has yet to be surpassed in terms of quality.

3. The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy series (Douglas Adams)

42. There. I've said the obvious joke. The problem of HHGTTG and the rest of the series is that it suffers from over-exposure. The jokes are so well-known that they're part of the British canon, like the Spanish Inquisition or Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. The whole series (well, maybe not Mostly Harmless) is brilliantly funny and provides a great pick-me-up on a regular basis after long, mirthless days.

2. Dune (Frank Herbert)

I think I've read Dune at least six times, and every time it's offered me something new. Its sequels provide raw, unadulterated philosophy, but the original provides adventure as well as politics. The true vision of Frank Herbert may be in later volumes, but it's the first which is the masterpiece (despite its admittedly clunky prose and occasionally flat characterisation).

1. Use of Weapons (Iain M. Banks)

'Tell me, what is happiness?'

Iain M. Banks wrote some stonking books. Most of these were set in or around the penumbra of his ultimate utopia, the Culture. Use of Weapons was the third of these, and it was his best. He never topped it, either in his SF writings or his mainstream output. Use of Weapons was - is - as close to perfect as SF gets. Ideas, characters, settings, politics, set-pieces... It had them all in a perfect blend of beautifully-controlled prose. It was funny, it was touching, it was violent, it was sexy. And it's a book I fully intend to take to the grave with me.

Final Fantasy XIII

It is, of course, just like me to be late. Final Fantasy XIII, the first JRPG released by Square-Enix in the PS3 and Xbox 360 generation, came out in 2010 and I've only just found the time and stubbornness to complete it. And this is despite receiving it as a gift just after it was released.

For anyone who doesn't know their videogaming onions, Final Fantasy XIII is the fourteenth (counting Final Fantasy X-2) numbered iteration of the exceedingly popular Final Fantasy series of JRPGs. Their formula is simple and effective, and has kept gamers playing for the best part of 30 years thanks to well-woven stories, interesting characters and a diverse range of gameplay. My own introduction to the series came in 2002 when Final Fantasy IX for the PS1 went platinum and found its way into my birthday wish list. I fell in love with everything to do with it almost immediately. It wasn't long before those other early 3D Goliaths Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII were sitting on my shelves.

What attracted me wasn't just the story or the gameplay. The games were big, serious games which were heavyweights in their field by any standard, but they never seemed to take themselves too seriously. There was a lightness of tone even in the darkest moments. They were difficult and frustrating at times, but they were also fun. Even now the classic FF games can make me laugh and brighten a dark day.

And that's why Final Fantasy XIII is the biggest disappointment I've played in many years. Although I can make many criticisms of its gameplay and story whilst praising the design and production quality, what it lacks most is the sense of fun which was inherent in earlier instalments. For the first time, I had the sense when playing through the 60 hours of the game that it was taking itself too seriously. Dark characters played their roles against an unrelenting dark background of dark darkness. Had the game been fun I would have been willing to forgive it its many flaws. As it is, the seriousness robs the game of any character and turns the whole thing into an unremitting grind.

There are lots of good things about the game, though, even if they don't seem to be the things which affect gameplay and enjoyment. Quite frankly, the production values are stunning. Without being a player of many modern AAA titles I can't properly assess these against others in the field of gaming post-2007, but I was blown away by the graphics and the design. From beginning to end the game is rich in gorgeous details. The atmosphere is superbly realised throughout.

However, you don't play a game for its atmosphere (not unless you're playing Silent Hill 2, at any rate). And in some ways the game's gorgeous façade actually serves to highlight some of the game's biggest problems. After all, why would you design so many stunning vistas and then restrict the player to only being able to gawp at them from time to time whilst running through fifty-odd hours of linear tunnels? It's a paradox that the game serves up time after time.

Because at its heart that's what Final Fantasy XIII is: a linear tunnel of frustration looking out onto the magnificence it could have had. There's a lack of variety in the gameplay which will frustrate even the most committed fan (and I'm pretty stubborn when it comes to my support of the franchise up to now). The puzzles, one-off mini-games, side-quests and open-world gameplay of previous editions have been sacrificed in favour of a two-facet game where the two facets are running around and battling a lot. Although all team-based JRPGs have those two aspects and rely heavily upon them, they normally have something to break the game up and retain the player's interest. Final Fantasy XIII doesn't.

Then there's the sense that the game doesn't want player involvement at all and has aspirations of being the first 60-hour film in cinematic history. Player involvement can be summed up as winning battles and then proceeding down a linear path to the next cut-scene. Dramatic set-pieces happen completely without player involvement even where there was scope for a mini-game. At one point near the end your party finds itself flying back to the game's first world only to be dumped in the middle of a series of what can only be described as street races. Final Fantasy VII would have had you controlling your speeder through the streets, avoiding oncoming traffic. Final Fantasy XIII simply engages in another drawn-out FMV that heightens frustration rather than encourage a sense of awe that you're meant to feel.

Even the battles are largely computer controlled. The paradigm tactical system lets you switch between tactical sets, but all that does is switch your characters' roles. Two characters in your three-man party will always been computer controlled while you control the party leader. The gambit system of Final Fantasy XII may have wrestled absolute control from the player, but at least the player could turn it off and make split-second decisions. In this, you're left switching between pre-set tactics and hitting X. And this goes on for 60 hours, without change.

In the right hands, Final Fantasy XIII would have been a good game. As it is, it's a mess hardly worthy of the title 'game'. It may look nice, but there's nothing beneath that shiny exterior to excite anyone but the most hardened fan. My advice would be to steer well clear if you're ever tempted.